http://boar.org.uk/abiwta5BourneChancel(fig7.htm Latest edit 6 Aug 2009

©R.J.PENHEY2008. photograph from a copy lent by the Willoughby Memorial Library

Bourne Archive.

The Abbey Church, Bourne.

Photographic Evidence for Dating the Structure of the Chancel.

Figure 7. The Early Nineteenth Century East Front.

In Moore’s book of 1809, there is an engraving of the eastern side of the Abbey Church and of Abbey House, of which a detail is shown here. It is credited to E. Howlett, from a drawing by T. Phillips. While it is an engraving rather than a photograph and though it shows the nave in a rather truncated way and there is no sign of the chancel ruins, it appears to represent the church building as it had been, before the chancel was rebuilt in 1807.

In the picture, something very similar to the present east window is shown. Whether this had been taken from the east wall of the chancel when the latter was abandoned is not wholly clear but it is possible. However, the politico-religious atmosphere of the mid-seventeenth century was such that the chancel windows had just been smashed and the chancel left to ruin. We must therefore, ask whether the parish would at that stage, have been inclined to insert the elaborate window into the new east wall of the nave, thereby incurring a need to re-glaze it, particularly as the wall had to be built in a hurry to restore the building to a usable condition after the unexpected assault it had suffered in December 1643. Also, there is little evidence in the masonry, that the window has been removed from the present east wall while the chancel was in a ruinous state, then replaced in its old position.

The likelihood is that the mullions, stripped of glass, remained in the ruin of the chancel and were simply incorporated into the rebuilt structure of 1807. The small differences between the existing tracery and that in the engraving may have been in the eye of the engraver. This artist’s licence would in any case, need to be invoked to account for the foreshortening of the building, which adjoins the east wall of the chancel to the east wall of the tower, so omitting not only the chancel but also the nave. Similarly, there is no sign of the south aisle, the Lady Chapel and the south porch which were clearly present well before 1807 and remain today. Also, in order to fit the little invented lean-to into the arrangement of the buildings shown, the artist has had to resort to a device reminiscent of Escher’s work

The likelihood seems to be that both Phillips’ drawing and Howlett’s engraving were made between the rebuilding of 1807 and the publication of the book in 1809, a time when the newly rebuilt ‘lofty chancel’ was attracting some notice.

Return to Photographic Evidence for Dating the Structure of the Chancel.

For the context into which this information fits, see the article on the Browne Monument